


(i'm through with these pills, they make me sit still) are you feeling fine?

by ampere



Category: Little Mix (Band)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 06:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ampere/pseuds/ampere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Perrie has ADHD and Leigh-Anne keeps her still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(i'm through with these pills, they make me sit still) are you feeling fine?

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the person who gave me a challenge to write a lerrie based on their video diary 9. And I did this a while back, completely forgot about it and now here it is...sorry eh 
> 
> Title from Everything Is Alright by MCS.

Perrie is like a buoy, floats and floats and sways away. Constantly in motion, drifting from place to place, mind always jumping around.

It's a lot better this way, she thinks. With the icky crawly feeling of air particles and waves of gravity holding her down and keeping her still. It's better than the sleepiness lull of nothing droning on inside her head, like a metronome _click click clicking_ away, reminding her of every breath she takes, every cell in her, dying and being born over and over and over again.

The pills give her little windows of twitches, like her energy is cursing along her veins, pulsing through her medication, a cry against the _keep still_ , _don't move_ being bore down upon her.

So she forgets to pack her pills, tells her mum she's taking them every day. It's a lie, because Perrie can't even remember ever being still, not at all, she shifts her eyes, drums her fingers, kicks her legs out. Her mouth moves a mile a minute. She's free, it's free, running around and bringing disaster with her, never stopping, just going and going, trying to get to a burn out, but never getting close to it.

The other girls always look tired, after hours and days of rehearsals and interviews and interacting with people. And Perrie, well Perrie thrives on that. Has a bouncing knee and shifty eyes, talks about everything and _anything_ , a blur of energy on the fuzzy picture of _too tired_ and _I need a break_.

Sometimes, sometimes Perrie lays in her bed, can hear the other girls sleeping and she thinks it's unfair. How easy it is for them to ground themselves, stay still, let their minds switch off and rest.

Her sleep is fickle, feverish and unsatisfying. She wishes she could call her mum and ask her to mail her pills. But those are only on the bad nights. When her leg twitches and her arms spasm out and sleep never comes.

She drifts, she coasts around and she can't focus, can't pay attention, gets bored too easy. Jesy tries to sit her down, hold her against the chair to _pay attention Perrie, quit moving_.

But it's hard, Perrie's body has no idea what _still_ is. Has no idea how to do that without pills.

It's not a problem, Perrie's been living with her ADHD for what seems forever. She can still remember the tests she had to take, the first time she was called into the nurse to take her first dose in school. The way she felt hot and sticky afterwards. Slow and heavy like molasses on a hot day.

Now all she feels is this rush. Of excitement and nervousness and energy trying to burst out of her skin like sunshine through curtains.

Leigh-Anne calls her sunshine, her little ray of sun. Lights up every time Perrie walks into the room and just starts moving. So it's easy. To reach out an let all her words spill out to Leigh-Anne.

To ask for help. To make her an anchor.

She's sweaty when it happens, done with the dance routine for their next live show. And Leigh-Anne looks at her from the wall of mirrors, red hair lopsided in its bun, clothes sweaty.

"What's up?" Leigh-Anne says after a beat, takes a drink from her water bottle and offers some of it to Perrie, eyes flickering at Jesy's head of curls ducking out of the room.

"I..." Perrie starts, pinches her clothes away from her, looks all over the room, counts the corners and starts over, "I can't stop moving," she says, taps her foot out as if in emphasis, as if she can control her body.

"Really," Leigh-Anne frowns, "I'm exhausted," she mutters, as if all of Perrie's energy is a blessing.

"Yeah," Perrie says, "yeah I need something to like..." she licks her lips, "something to like hold me down."

Leigh-Anne stops putting her things away, looks at their reflections. Hers stock still, limbs locked, not able to form a proper response. And Perrie all jittery, arms swinging, toes pressing against the hard floor.

"That's not ok..." Leigh-Anne finally says.

Perrie holds on to Leigh-Anne, murmurs how she left her pills on purpose, how slow they make her, how she doesn't like them. She gets a scowl thrown at her, a sweet quiet murmur in the empty room, _you need those Perrie, you need them to get better_.

Perrie shakes her head, twists the front of Leigh-Anne's shirt in her fingers and holds on. She likes this, likes the warm solidness of Leigh-Anne, the way she can hold on and feels like she doesn't have to worry about floating away, about another bad thing.

-

She keeps having these spurs of energy that leave the other contestants baffled, frustrate Perrie to no end, make her move and shout and exist as loudly as she can. She can't help it, Perrie has no idea how to control herself.

So Leigh-Anne takes the job into her own hands. Holds on to Perrie, like a mechanical bull, throwing her about but not enough to make her let go.

She lets Perrie cling, hold on for dear life, murmur and press rapid words to her chest until she goes limp and her eyes droop and all she wants is sleep with Leigh-Anne's solid weight holding her down the whole night through.

That's when it starts to get complicated. Because Perrie's mind whirs into over drive and her thoughts are too fast and too many to keep up with. And then is less holding on to Leigh-Anne to keep from vibrating herself into particles and more a _Leigh-Anne looks so nice today I want to hold her hand_. It blurs together and Perrie doesn't pick up on it until she finds her hand in Leigh-Anne's a time too many and the energy at the end of her fingers is all channelled into wanting to touch Leigh-Anne forever.

They have to make their video diary for the semifinals. And it's exciting and Perrie is _so_ happy, she blurs around the edges at how much she's vibrating.

The cameras are pointed at them and they're talking, _she's_ talking but Perrie has no idea of what. Her mind has drifted to the great perhaps, one where Little Mix make it big and she gets to be with Leigh-Anne for the rest of her life.

She's making silly faces and telling stories and being too much, she can feel how close Leigh-Anne is, how close she is, all she has to do is reach out, pass the wall of energy, the rapid fuzziness of her brain, reach out and anchor herself.

Her fingers act faster than her brain, curl to the side of Leigh-Anne, a vice grip that pulls her out of her frenzy, her eyes gone dark with focus, attention zoned in on the way the warmness of Leigh-Anne's skin feels against the palm of her hand.

It's times like this that Perrie wishes she had brought her pills.

-

Everything zooms by after that, the actual semifinals, the finals, winning. It's like the world has been put to the highest switch, cranked up to it's maximum and Perrie, for once, can barely keep up.

It stops for the smallest of moments, when Leigh-Anne reaches over and kisses her, a jittery press and then another that makes Perrie feel like her muscles are about to move away from her skin. And then. It's a rush again.

So she ignores it for a bit. The kiss, the feeling of slowness Leigh-Anne makes her feel. Like she wants to slow down and make all the time in the world just for her. But her body betrays her and keeps moving. From interviews to photo shoots to recording sessions.

And when the world is starting to swim around her head and everything looks off kilter, she can't help but reach out, hold on to Leigh-Anne and ground herself. Into a blissful moment of nothing but Leigh-Anne and her warmness.

Days off are the worst, she can feel the tight coil of energy just ready to reach out and move, do something, anything. She takes her pills those days, with no Leigh-Anne to hold her down and no other way of making herself still.

She's in this deep aching sleep when she hears the far away jingle of her doorbell. A _ring ring ring_ that seems to be on loop. And it's hard to wake up, lift her eyelids open and swing her legs out of bed.

She feels sluggish, like all her bones have melted and her muscles are gone, a gloop of the Perrie she was. She drags her feet across her flat, manages enough energy to open the door and register that it's Leigh-Anne.

Her eyes are wide and worried and Perrie's sure that's _not_ ok but her mind is still switching on and all she can think about is falling back to sleep.

"Hi," Leigh-Anne says and Perrie yawns, eyes going watery and limbs pulsing with the aching feeling of sleep that won't leave her alone.

"Was sleeping," Perrie slurs, waves her hand at Leigh-Anne as she shuffles back to her room, intending fully on going back to sleep.

The room is darker than it was at the time she knocked out. The afternoon washed away and the night life a muffled sound.

She curls into herself, can feel her eyes dropping and her lashes heavy with sleep. Sweet _sweet_ sleep. And then the heaviness of a body, warm and heady and almost like sleep, but so much nicer, with a smell of orange and vanilla that makes a lazy smile against Perrie's lips.

She turns around and her mouth bumps against Leigh-Anne's, a startled movement, and she makes to pull back, but her senses are dulled and her brain makes everything so much more nicer, no big deal.

She keeps pressing, swipes her tongue along the seam of Leigh-Anne's mouth, can feel the airiness of a _finally_ being breathe out.

And her world becomes a rush again, of Leigh-Anne and her mouth, her skin pressed to Perrie's skin, the _skip skip skip_ of her heart pressed to her chest. A vacuum of restless energy to touch Leigh-Anne, devour her mouth, hold on to her and try to stretch this moment, to make up for all the time they missed at how slow they were moving.

Leigh-Anne rolls on top of her, hands cupping Perrie's jaw and it's a valiant effort to go slow but Perrie's body has a lot to catch up to.

Perrie laughs, murmurs a _sorry sorry_ and Leigh-Anne presses down, keeps her still and it feels like it's going to be ok.


End file.
